Saturday, October 23, 2010

Pick Your Progressive And Help

by digby

Mark Twain said "the man who is a pessimist before forty-eight knows too much; if he is an optimist after it, he knows too little." At this late stage in my life, when it comes to politics especially, I consider myself a pessimist who enjoys being pleasantly surprised.

So, it's with some trepidation that I allow myself to feel a little bit optimistic that we may avoid the complete blowout that the polling analysts are predicting when I read something like this:

As the Associated Press reports, over three million voters have already cast their ballots this time. Due to the secret ballot, we cannot know how they voted -- but in many cases, the media is able to find out who voted, thanks to partisan voter registrations in many states. And across the country, both the Dems and the GOP are performing well in different spots.

The article goes on to show where the two parties seem to be performing well. It's full of caveats and disclaimers about the meaning of what we know so far, but it's cause for some small sliver of hope that this thing isn't going to be the tsunami everyone's been fearing.

But here's the thing. There's still a long way to go and the momentum could be turned on election day if the radical Tea Partiers manage to get their people to the polls in huge numbers to dance on liberals' graves. The Democrats have to get out every last straggling voter to compete.

Here's what you can do to help if you're not in a district where you need to be talking to your own neighbors or knocking on doors: phone bank for progressives around the country. The PCCC has put together a great operation that's very user friendly and focused on the candidates progressives are trying to help. DFA and Blue America have joined up and are asking our members to help out. We'd be grateful if you could do the same.

Here's the thing: if we can save some of these progressive members, we might just have a chance of changing some conventional wisdom. I know it's a long shot, but it's really worth our while to try. If these are the survivors --- and some of them, like Grayson, are in very tough districts -- we will have sent a message they can no longer ignore.

I don't want to blow smoke. If this is a tidal wave as everyone's expecting, then many of these candidates will drown along with the 2006 Emmanuel Blue Dog class. We could lose a lot of good progressives in the surge. But if things are not as dire, and individual candidates are able to get past all the din and make their case, progressives may pull a few of these races out. If that happens, we will have a much clearer playing field after November and a much different argument.

It's certainly worth trying and its certainly worth doing to show these politicians who've stood up for progressive values, that when the chips are down we'll do everything we can to help them. Here's the link.